Here’s something nobody tells you about growing a business: the thing that got you here — your ability to do everything, control everything, be everything to everyone — is the exact thing that will keep you stuck.

I sat down with Eleanor Beaton on the Alive & Well podcast recently and she said something within the first few minutes that I haven’t stopped thinking about. 

She told me her revenue plateaued — not because leads dried up or her marketing failed — but because she was subconsciously avoiding growth. 

She’d get an inquiry and take two weeks to respond.

 Not because she was disorganized. Because some part of her knew that more clients, in the way she’d been operating, meant more pain.

That’s the moment most people don’t talk about. But it’s the moment everything can change. Here’s what Eleanor taught me.

The Producer Trap: When Doing It All Becomes Your Ceiling

Eleanor breaks down the development of women entrepreneurs into three stages: producer, replicator, and multiplier. 

Most women get stuck at producer. 

That’s the stage where you are the business — you’re delivering the work, touching every client, holding every outcome.

It feels great at first. All the wins are yours. The direct connection to impact is intoxicating. But there’s a ceiling. And you hit it the moment the business needs more of you than one human body can give.

The replicator stage requires you to step back and become an architect — codifying your methods, creating systems, training others to deliver the transformation. The multiplier stage takes it further: you trust your team not just to follow a process, but to deliver results their way.

Each stage is an identity shift. Not a strategy shift. An identity shift.

The Emotions Nobody Warns You About

Eleanor shared something with real vulnerability in this episode. When her team started getting thanked by clients — instead of her — she felt jealous. Not proud. Not relieved. Jealous. She wanted to say “hey, I’m the one who built this.”

And then she felt ashamed for feeling that way. So she shut it down and pushed through.

This is what makes identity shifts so hard. It’s not just logistical — it’s emotional. You’re grieving the version of yourself who got praised for being the one who does everything. And if you don’t give yourself space to actually feel that, you’ll keep unconsciously sabotaging your own growth.

Three Levels of Trust That Unlock Growth

Eleanor laid out a trust-building progression that I found incredibly practical:

• Trust your systems. This is the easiest starting point because you created them. You can point to a process, a flowchart, an SOP. It’s tangible.
• Trust your team. This happens in layers — first trusting them to follow your processes, then to create their own processes, and finally to deliver results with autonomy.
• Trust the container. This is the big one. Trusting the world you’ve built — the culture, the structure, the vision — to hold without you controlling every piece.

Each level requires you to release a little more control and expand your capacity to sit in discomfort. And that is a nervous system skill, not just a business skill.

The Master Never Hurries

Eleanor quoted something that’s been living rent-free in my brain: “The amateur is always in a rush. The master never hurries.”

She compared it to playing squash with her mom growing up. Eleanor was athletic and flailing all over the court. Her mom barely moved — just a gentle step here, a gentle step there — and beat her every time.

Pacing isn’t about going slow forever. It’s about matching your pace to your stage. Early on, speed and iteration matter. As you grow, patience and precision matter more. And at each new stage, your relationship with urgency has to evolve.

Subtract to Multiply

This might be the most important principle Eleanor shared: growth doesn’t start with addition. It starts with subtraction.

Most entrepreneurs treat all their offers and all their customers equally. But when you actually audit, you’ll find that a few things drive the majority of your revenue. Eleanor’s advice is to identify those core profit drivers, focus there, and let everything else exist without your energy.

Then you codify. Build frameworks. Create systems. Use AI as a tool to help you map out step-by-step processes. And finally, renegotiate your value to the company — from being the one who delivers the work to being the one who develops the people.

Simplicity scales. Complexity fails. And this applies far beyond business.

Think in Decades, Not Deadlines

Eleanor referenced Dr. Claudia Goldin — the first woman to win a solo Nobel Prize in Economics — whose research shows that the gender pay gap is driven primarily by heterosexual couples making rational decisions about who takes the “greedy job” (inflexible, higher pay) versus the “flexible job” (more time flexibility, less pay). Most often, dad takes greedy and mom takes flexible.

What Eleanor emphasized is that this doesn’t have to be a permanent identity. When you zoom out and look at your career in decades instead of quarters, you can own the phase you’re in right now without panicking about an invisible deadline you’ve set for yourself.

For the woman with young kids who feels tapped — this reframe is everything. It’s not about doing less. It’s about being strategic about what season you’re in and trusting that there’s time.

Non-Negotiables That Actually Recharge You

Eleanor shared a research finding that genuinely surprised me: for a hobby to truly rejuvenate you, it needs to match the stimulation level of your work. If your work is high-intensity, decision-heavy, and fast-paced, a quiet hobby like knitting probably won’t cut it. You need something equally absorbing — but in a completely different way.

For Eleanor, that’s competitive soccer and lifting weights. The intensity absorbs her fully, and only after that active discharge can she actually settle into rest. She also talked about the power of investing in friendships — something she neglected for years while her kids were young, and has since reclaimed as a core part of her capacity.

And here’s the generational piece: Eleanor’s mom modeled this. She played squash, went to the gym, and made it clear that this was non-negotiable. Eleanor internalized that. The little people are watching — and what we model about caring for ourselves teaches them more than anything we say.

The Bottom Line

Eleanor was asked what it means to live and lead alive and well, and her answer was simple: full self-expression. Am I fully expressing what’s inside me? And from there — engineering her calendar so that being in a high-vibe state is her primary job, not the exception.

This episode challenged me, made me take notes, and honestly made me want to go audit my own business through Eleanor’s lens immediately.

If you’re a woman who’s built something powerful and you’re ready to grow it without grinding yourself into dust, this one’s for you.

Listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6vuP7zZ62b8BagwjOtBKAG

Key Takeaways

• Growth requires identity shifts, not just strategy shifts — and the emotions that come with that are real and valid
• Build trust in layers: systems first, then team, then the container you’ve built
• Subtract to multiply — focus on your core profit drivers and let the rest exist without your energy
• Think about your career in decades, not quarters, especially during the season of raising young kids
• Choose hobbies that match your work’s stimulation level for actual nervous system recovery
• What you model about self-care creates generational impact — the little people are watching

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